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Opinion | We must start thinking about the drip-drip effects of climate change

  • If someone consumes lots of sugar, the damaging impact takes time to show up, but it will – and the same is true of global warming
  • In Asia, rising heat could affect children, then parents and economies. Societies must watch out for small events that could lead to far worse outcomes

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A woman shades her eyes in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, on September 15, 2022. In Asia, the main problem is rising heat and more variable rainfall. Photo: Xiaomei Chen
Media reports about climate change typically focus on big events – a wildfire in Greece that forces people into the sea, a flood in Germany that washes away a town, a drought in California that destroys a season’s harvest, unprecedented rainfall in Hong Kong, or a long heatwave in Vietnam.
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But this is to greatly misunderstand how climate change is happening. Big events make headlines but, for the next few years, lots of small events should be the main concern. These will bring difficult long-term problems which are mostly uninsurable.

Think of it a bit like looking after your teeth. If someone consumes lots of sugar, the damaging impact on their teeth takes time to show up. At a certain point though, their teeth begin to fall apart and this affects their health in lots of ways.

The pain of toothache and bad breath aside, their cardiovascular and respiratory systems might suffer. They could have gum disease and oral infections which are linked to higher rates of diabetes. Bad teeth might lead to digestive problems, as well as headaches. They can even affect a person’s mental health.

Put simply, lots of small events (eating too much sugar every day) gradually escalate into a series of interlinked long-term health problems which are often hard to relate back to their original source with certainty.

02:04

Relative humidity hits 100% in southern China

Relative humidity hits 100% in southern China

And so it is with climate change. In the UK, there is now a farming crisis following the wettest 18 months in recorded history. Crop yields are down not by a few per cent but by about 30 per cent in some cases, and newborn animals are dying in the fields. This means food prices will rise, as will the volume of imports. This will have an impact on the value of the pound, and grain supplies elsewhere.

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